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What has always bothered me is the nomenclature; "black hole," is an astounding misnomer. A hole is not something, it is a cavity in something else. Black holes
by Maursault 4y ago
What has always bothered me is the nomenclature; "black hole," is an astounding misnomer. A hole is not something, it is a cavity in something else. Black holes are definitely something and a lot of it. Space is the black hole of the Universe, not black holes. Those are the mountains.
- coldtea 4y agoWell, it's not a description, it's a name. Names are allowed to not be accurate to the thing (a girl named Sandy is not necessarily made out of sand, and light is not light, it's weightless). And itself is based on two things: that they're absolutely black as in they don't reflect anything (that's what they believed when then the name came about), and that things can fall into them. >A hole is not something, it is a cavity in something else Well, and black holes can behave like cavities in the universe. They bend the surrounding area with their gravity so much that they end up forming a kind of cavity.
- Maursault 4y agoBut a black hole is not a cavity but instead the extreme opposite of a cavity.
- Nevermark 4y ago"Black holes" absorbs light, so they can be reasonably thought of as "black" (despite lighting effects as it interacts with surrounding matter), and anything that gets too close falls in, like a "hole" (or a cavity). Compound names mostly come from associations, not careful logic. Names in general are arbitrary symbols, not definitions.
- Maursault 4y agoMy issue is not with the descriptor, "black," but in calling it a hole. You get too close to a star or planet, you will also fall in, but we don't consider stars or planets as holes. "Gravity well" is a better descriptor, but not when considered a hole, rather only when considered full of water, but here the water is instead gravity, and gravity always implies something massive, not the absence of something else. Black holes, as we think of them as something, are really shadows. It'd be more accurate and less confusing to call them singularity shadows.
- goatlover 4y agoIt's a hole in spacetime in the sense that the inside of the Black Hole is completely cutoff from the outside, with the exception of Hawking radiation. A black hole's interior is causally separate from the rest of the universe.
- Maursault 4y agoThis doesn't solve the problem. Spacetime itself is a hole, so you're saying a black hole is a hole within a hole, and we can designate an infinite number of holes within a hole.
- forgotpwd16 4y agoSounds like something you'll read about in modern physics.
- coldtea 4y agoIsn't the idea that the universe (or the superset of universes) a hole within a hole (or an infinite number of holes within a hole) something physicists already entertain? E.g. there are several theories about how our universe itself is the inside of a black hole, and so on.
- zethus 4y agoThe author does take a wild ride into the world where, via Hawking radiation, the interior is NOT causally separate, yet quantum-ly entangled.
- Nevermark 4y ago> "Gravity well" is a better descriptor, but not when considered a hole [...] But a well IS a hole in the ground and a pretty deep subject.
- Maursault 4y ago> But a well IS a hole in the ground A water well is a special type of hole known as an excavation, meaning, of course, that it was excavated. Wells are not made by accumulating so many things that they just sink into the ground, and nothing is taken out of a black hole to create it.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> a girl named Sandy is not necessarily made out of sand Technically, the meaning of the name is "defender of men".
- yellsatclouds 4y ago> A hole is not something, it is a cavity in something else this reasoning also applies to "infinity". it literally means NOT-finite. it refers to the lack of a thing: namely a biggest number. then again, freaking language and maths sure make us able to think about these 'lack of [blank]' as if they were actual things (to the point that abstractly they are as real as it gets)
- Maursault 4y ago> this reasoning also applies to "infinity" "Infinity" applies to the reasoning of what a hole is, but not to what a black hole is. A black hole is not not something. It is something, yet a hole is not something. Unlike a hole, a black hole is defined by its inherent characteristics, mass, spin and electric charge. A hole can only be defined by characteristics of what it is not, the empty volume of missing substrate.
- yellsatclouds 4y agoagreed 100%. a black hole is a physical object unlike infinity. thanks for not letting me get away with being 'sublty wrong'. my larger point was about how language 'creates' such real abstractions; sometimes with terrible names (your original complaint).
- Maursault 4y agoYou are right about language, with contronyms and oxymorons. Especially in nomenclature, many things are named incorrectly or have contradictory names, such as Koala Bear, Whale Shark, Killer Whale, Starfish, Prairie Dog, King Cobra, Red Panda, Guinea Pig, Bearcat, Flying Lemur, Flying Squirrels, etc. Also, asteroid, which are not at all particularly "star like."
- yamtaddle 4y ago- "Black" — self-explanatory. - "Hole" — things fall in and don't come out (more or less). Plus they look like holes on those 2d representations of space-time. Seems reasonable to me.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Maursault 4y ago> - "Black" — self-explanatory. I wasn't willing to argue this before because my issue was not with the adjective. But actually black holes are not really black, they emit radiation. > - "Hole" — things fall in and don't come out (more or less). But things fall into any massive object like planets or stars, so "hole" is ambiguous. Things also fall out of holes, such as holes in a ceiling or screw holes. > Plus they look like holes on those 2d representations of space-time. Seems reasonable to me. It is a fair point to say that the hole of a black hole is a 4 dimensional hole, except that space-time is itself a 4 dimensional hole, leading to more ambiguity.
- codethief 4y ago> except that space-time is itself a 4 dimensional hole, leading to more ambiguity. You keep repeating that spacetime were a hole. What makes you think that?
- Maursault 4y agoHoles are made of space by definition, therefore spacetime is a hole.
- nahstra 4y agoWhat definition? Definitely not true in math - if you take a circle (S^1 = { (x, y) : x^2 + y^2 == 1 }) it has a hole as defined by homotopy in the middle and there is no 'space' there. If you fill it with space you get a disk (D^2 = { (x, y) : x^2 + y^2 <= 1 }) there is no longer a hole as defined by homotopy/is contractible.
- Koshkin 4y agoI think I've seen it spelled "black whole", but that's probably just me...
- klvino 4y agoAnd I think we've seen the same Woody Allen movie
- random314 4y ago
- forgotpwd16 4y ago>A hole is not something, it is a cavity in something else. You can say black holes are holes in spacetime with a big rock at the bottom.
- Maursault 4y ago> You can say black holes are holes in spacetime with a big rock at the bottom. The more I've thought about this, the more it seems wrong. Black holes are not a hole in spacetime like a puncture hole in fabric. There is no missing spacetime like there would be missing fabric. Black holes are more accurately a round 4D valley in spacetime rather than a hole in spacetime.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago>Black holes are not a hole in spacetime like a puncture hole in fabric. Who said puncture holes? Ground holes also exist you know.
- Maursault 4y agoAll holes are punctures, including ground holes.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThere are no holes that puncture the ground. All holes in the ground are, in your terminology, "valleys".
- Maursault 4y agoA puncture is a hole, and vice versa. These are synonyms.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoHow many holes are there in a coffee mug?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dlandis 4y agoCurious how you feel about donut holes.
- Maursault 4y agoThey're delicious, but they make me a little gassy.
- NegativeK 4y agoYou seem to be working from an arbitrarily tight definition of hole that's excluding black holes. There are lots of different definitions of "hole", and I don't think black hole is misleading to the layfolk. They're typically dark, like some holes. And like some holes, stuff falls in and generally doesn't survive the journey. To the physicist, they know that the words "black hole" just reference a physical object with lots of mathy description.
- Maursault 4y agoNo definitions of holes include a black hole, and no definitions of black holes include a hole.
- queuebert 4y agoIt was catchier than "event-horizon surrounded singularity".